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For Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Wt FX had yet again demonstrated what the studio does best: storytelling through visuals and innovative techniques. With performance-driven animated characters and expansive, immersive worlds, Wt FX brought Wakanda and its underwater kingdom of Talokan to astonishing realistic brilliance and creativity. Their proprietary pipeline empowered more than 1,500 artists across global hubs in Wellington, Vancouver, and Melbourne to push the boundaries of visual effects.With decades of experience and a legacy that boasts iconic characters like Gollum and Neytiri, Wt FX blended live-action with photorealistic environments and digital characters with such seamless perfection. Such attention to detail has ensured their reputation as the pinnacle of visual effects artistry. Their contributions to Wakanda Forever stand as testament to their dedication to innovation, helping create a cinematic masterpiece that inspires audiences worldwide.The post Black Panther: Wakanda Forever VFX Highlights by Wt FX appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Transporting viewers to a chilling winter in 1960s Baltimore, Futureworks delivered stunning visual effects for Lady in the Lake, transforming sunny days into icy, atmospheric scenes. The team meticulously crafted digital snow, frost-covered environments, and authentic wintry textures to immerse audiences in the hauntingly beautiful world of the series. Every frame reflects the commitment to details, from subtle breaths of characters in cold air to the glistening frost on windows, that enhances the tone of the story as eerie and melancholic.Futureworks arty contribution definitely helped shape the atmosphere of this series by taking photoreal effects and merging it with live footage. Innovative methods transformed a relatively modern production into a period chilling drama, depicting the true extent of VFX in storytelling. They have given rise to the beauty of visual quality in Lady in the Lake-the haunting charm of 1960s Baltimore in all its details.The post The Lady in the Lake: VFX Breakdown by Futureworks appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Architects Eugenio Simonetti and Bastian San Martin have completed KW House in Chile, a "study in duality" that contrasts glass-walled living spaces with intimate wood-lined bedrooms.Located in an area of protected forest near Villarrica volcano in the Araucana region, the 309-square-metre home is designed to both immerse its visitors in the forest during the summer and provide a comforting retreat during winter.To achieve this, Chilean architects Simonetti and San Marin created a dramatic contrast between the two levels of KW House, combining a fully-glazed ground floor dubbed the "aquarium" with a more private wood-lined first floor.Eugenio Simonetti and Bastian San Martin have completed KW House"KW House is a study in duality, combining a bold engagement with the natural environment on the first floor with a carefully crafted sense of seclusion on the second," Simonetti told Dezeen."This duality not only reflects the seasonal adaptability of the house but also serves the diverse needs of its inhabitants, whether connecting with nature or seeking privacy," he added.In summer, full-height glass doors on either side of the ground floor can be opened up to the surrounding forest, where a small wooden veranda and walkways lead to viewpoints including seating areas and a fire pit.The home has a glazed ground floor overlooking a Chilean forestIn winter, KW House can be "hermetically sealed", with a perimeter corridor connecting two living spaces at either end. One of these is slightly sunken with a wood-burning stove while the other is organised around a fireplace.Three structural staircases, two of which are framed by large X-shaped steel supports, separate the home's living spaces from a central kitchen and dining area.These staircases also divide KW House's first floor, which can either be separated into a series of "apartments" each with its own landing, or combined into a large, flexible family space.Staircases divide the ground-level living spaces"If the inhabitants of the bedrooms are part of the family, the second floor works with all the doors open, in which you circulate as if you were walking through a series of train cars," explains Simonetti."If they are guests from outside the family unit, the lobbies are blocked, forcing guests to only travel along the stairs, which provides greater privacy," he added.Read: Hebra Arquitectos tucks Lone Oak House within wooded site in ChileElevated above the glazed and exposed ground floor, KW House's cabin-like bedrooms are intended to provide a sense of solitude.Large skylights and small windows illuminate these areas while not detracting from the feeling of seclusion, with the pitched roof and walls panelled entirely in wood.Wood panelling is used throughout the upper floor"Few windows, abundant Lenga wood panelling, and skylights create warm, introspective spaces, while west-facing skylights provide controlled views of the El Cerduo mountain range," Simonetti explained."The thoughtful material choices and functional adaptability ensure that the design responds to both its environmental context and the lifestyle of its occupants, resulting in a harmonious and enduring architectural statement."Small openings and skylights draw light into the bedroomsOther homes in Chile recently featured on Dezeen include a coastal residence by Swiss studio Emergentes Architectures Srl that also balances seclusion and openness and a dwelling elevated above a wooded site on steel pilotis by Hebra Arquitectos.The photography is by Pablo Casals Aguirre.The post Glass walls immerse inhabitants of Chilean home in surrounding forest appeared first on Dezeen.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities across diverse natural language processing tasks, from generating text to contextual reasoning. However, their efficiency is often hampered by the quadratic complexity of the self-attention mechanism. This challenge becomes particularly pronounced with longer input sequences, where computational and memory demands grow significantly. Traditional methods that modify self-attention often render them incompatible with pre-trained models, while others focus on optimizing key-value (KV) caches, which can lead to inconsistencies between training and inference. These challenges have driven researchers to seek more efficient ways to enhance LLM performance while minimizing resource demands.Researchers from Huawei Noahs Ark Lab, The University of Hong Kong, KAUST, and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tbingen, have proposed SepLLM, a sparse attention mechanism that simplifies attention computation. SepLLM focuses on three token types: Initial Tokens, Neighboring Tokens, and Separator Tokens. Notably, separator tokens, such as commas and periods, often receive disproportionately high attention weights in LLMs. SepLLM leverages these tokens to condense segment information, reducing computational overhead while retaining essential context.Designed to integrate seamlessly with existing models, SepLLM supports training from scratch, fine-tuning, and streaming applications. Its sparse attention mechanism prioritizes essential tokens, paving the way for efficient long-context processing.Technical Overview and Advantages of SepLLM1. Sparse Attention Mechanism SepLLM retains only three types of tokens:Initial Tokens: The first tokens in a sequence, often key to understanding context.Neighboring Tokens: Tokens near the current token, ensuring local coherence.Separator Tokens: High-frequency tokens like commas and periods that encapsulate segment-level information.By focusing on these tokens, SepLLM reduces the number of computations required, enhancing efficiency without compromising model performance.2. Enhanced Long-Text Processing SepLLM processes sequences exceeding four million tokens, surpassing traditional length limitations. This capability is particularly valuable for tasks like document summarization and long conversations, where maintaining context is crucial.3. Improved Inference and Memory Efficiency SepLLMs separator-based compression mechanism accelerates inference and reduces memory usage. For instance, on the GSM8K-CoT benchmark, SepLLM reduced KV cache usage by 50%. It also demonstrated a 28% reduction in computational costs and a 26% decrease in training time compared to standard models using the Llama-3-8B architecture.4. Versatile Deployment SepLLM is adaptable to various deployment scenarios, offering support for:Integration with pre-trained models.Training from scratch for specialized applications.Fine-tuning and streaming for dynamic real-time use cases.Experimental Results and InsightsThe effectiveness of SepLLM has been validated through rigorous testing:Training-Free Setting: Using the Llama-3-8B-Instruct model, SepLLM was tested on GSM8K-CoT and MMLU benchmarks. It matched the performance of full-attention models while reducing KV cache usage to 47%, demonstrating its ability to retain crucial context and reasoning with fewer resources.Training from Scratch: When applied to the Pythia-160M-deduped model, SepLLM achieved faster convergence and improved task accuracy. Increasing neighboring tokens (n=128) further enhanced perplexity and downstream performance.Post-Training: SepLLM adapted efficiently to pre-trained Pythia-1.4B-deduped models through fine-tuning, aligning with its sparse attention design. A tailored cosine learning rate scheduler ensured consistent loss reduction.Streaming Applications: SepLLM excelled in streaming scenarios involving infinite-length inputs, such as multi-turn dialogues. On the PG19 dataset, it achieved lower perplexity and faster inference times compared to StreamingLLM, with reduced memory usage.ConclusionSepLLM addresses critical challenges in LLM scalability and efficiency by focusing on Initial Tokens, Neighboring Tokens, and Separator Tokens. Its sparse attention mechanism strikes a balance between computational demands and performance, making it an attractive solution for modern NLP tasks. With its ability to handle long contexts, reduce overhead, and integrate seamlessly with existing models, SepLLM provides a practical approach for advancing LLM technology.As the need for processing extensive contexts grows, solutions like SepLLM will be pivotal in shaping the future of NLP. By optimizing computational resources while maintaining strong performance, SepLLM exemplifies a thoughtful and efficient design for next-generation language models.Check out the Paper and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our60k+ ML SubReddit. FREE UPCOMING AI WEBINAR (JAN 15, 2025): Boost LLM Accuracy with Synthetic Data and Evaluation IntelligenceJoin this webinar to gain actionable insights into boosting LLM model performance and accuracy while safeguarding data privacy.The post SepLLM: A Practical AI Approach to Efficient Sparse Attention in Large Language Models appeared first on MarkTechPost.

Looking for the most recentregular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.I didn't do that well on today'sConnections: Sports Edition. For one thing, I'm not exactly up on which colleges certain athletes attended. If you need help, read on for hints and answers for today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle.For now, the game is in beta, which means the Times is testing it out to see if it's popular before adding it to the site's Games app. You can play it daily for now for free and then we'll have to see if it sticks around.Read more: NYT Has a Connections Game for Sports Fans. I Tried ItHints for today's Connections: Sports Edition groupsHere are four hints for the groupings in today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.Yellow group hint: You can beat them.Green group hint: Cheerleaders have this.Blue group hint: O'Connell is another one.Purple group hint:They were Volunteers.Answers for today's Connections: Sports Edition groupsYellow group: Easy opponentGreen group: SpiritBlue group: NFL head coachesPurple group:Tennessee alumniRead more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English WordsWhat are today's Connections: Sports Edition answers? The completed NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Jan. 12, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNETThe yellow words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is easy opponent. The four answers are breeze, cupcake, pushover and tomato can.The green words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is spirit. The four answers are gusto, verve, vigor and zeal.The blue words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is NFL head coaches. The four answers are Bowles, Campbell, Quinn and Ryans.The purple words in today's ConnectionsThe theme is Tennessee alumni. The four answers are Helton, Manning, Parker and Witten.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer?Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Connections puzzles.Today'sStrandspuzzle offers up a bunch of fun synonyms for a certain feeling or reaction. A couple of them are long, which is nice, because they use up a lot of letters in the puzzle grid. If you need hints and answers, read on.Also, I go into depth about therules for Strands in this story.If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visitCNET's NYT puzzle hints page.Read more:NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So FarHint for today's Strands puzzleToday's Strands theme is:Wait what?If that doesn't help you, here's a clue: OMGClue words to unlock in-game hintsYour goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle's theme. If you're stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:TONS, REAL, DEAL, NUTS, GOBS, SACK, SACKS, BALD, MAST, SMACk, SMACKS, BOOS, PRISEAnswers for today's Strands puzzleThese are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you've got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:STUN, ASTONISH, GOBSMACK, SURPRISE, FLABBERGASTToday's Strands spangramToday's Strands spangram isMINDBLOWN.To find it, start with the M that's four letters to the right on the top row, and wind down. The completed NYT Strands puzzle for Jan. 12, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNET

Looking forthe most recentMini Crossword answer?Click here for today's Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands and Connections puzzles.I would just like to say that 8 Across is not SNARE, and thinking it was set me way back on today's NYT Mini Crossword. Also, for 6 Down, think of how that word is spelled when refering to cars, not figure skating. Need some help with today's Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times' games collection. If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections and Strands answers, you can visitCNET's NYT puzzle hints page.Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini CrosswordLet's get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers. The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for Jan. 12, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNETMini across clues and answers1A clue: 2019 flop whose Variety review began "Nine may not be enough lives for some of the stars to live down their involvement in thisAnswer: CATS5A clue: Hawaiian greetingAnswer: ALOHA7A clue: Wrinkle-removing treatmentAnswer: BOTOX8A clue: EntanglementAnswer: SNARL9A clue: Pure joy Answer: GLEEMini down clues and answers1D clue: They're hard to hail in the rainAnswer: CABS2D clue: "___ came a spider / Who sat down beside her "Answer: ALONG3D clue: SumAnswer: TOTAL4D clue: Place for beachcombingAnswer: SHORE6D clue: Rod with wheelsAnswer: AXLEHow to play more Mini CrosswordsThe New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day's Mini Crossword for free, but you'll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

Auteur Gilberto Scofield Jr. Doutorando do Programa de Ps-Graduao em Mdia e Cotidiano (PPGMC), Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) Dclaration dintrtsGilberto Scofield Jr. ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possde pas de parts, ne reoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a dclar aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.PartenairesVoir les partenaires de TheConversation FranceLanguesEnglishPortugueseMetas founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Tuesday 7 a series of changes to the content moderation actions on his platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, eliminating fact-checkers, slowing down the processes of taking down potentially damaging content from the social fabric and reducing/reallocating his own moderation teams - all in the name of freedom of expression.Despite the noble tone, many who studies the very current phenomena of threats to the integrity and ethics of information, social datification, the platformisation of the economy, surveillance capitalism and data colonialism were appalled.Zuckerberg didnt just list measures to loosen content controls on his networks. As with Elon Musks X platform, the entrepreneur announced the adoption, instead of checking, of so-called community notes, a feature that allows network users to make assessments and add points of view - opinions based or not on evidence - about content in disinformative terms.But the similarity with Musk doesnt end there. Zuckerberg has announced an alliance with Donald Trumps yet-to-be sworn-in government in an imaginary crusade against censorship of freedom of expression inside and outside the US. Taking into account what is known about Trump and Musks way of acting digitally, it would be better to say a crusade in defence of disinformation and the social chaos and polarisation caused in large part by the contamination of public debate by disinformation, hate speech and the far right. These are tactics that benefit the two billionaires politically and economically, as well as in gaining and maintaining power.() we will work with President Trump to resist governments around the world that are persecuting American companies and pushing for more censorship. The US has the worlds strongest constitutional protections for freedom of expression. Europe has an increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and hampering innovation. Latin American countries have secret courts that can quietly order companies to remove content. China has censored our apps, preventing them from working in the country. The only way to resist this global trend is with the support of the US government, Zuckerberg said in his statement.By saying that it will reinforce so-called civic content peoples opinions Meta effectively aligns its platforms with Trumpism, surrendering to the narrative defended by Trump and Musk, a kind of billionaire post-truth dystopia that values personal opinion more than individual or collective rights.The announcement thus creates a number of fronts for potential international conflicts:Integrity of informationBy abandoning fact-checking and adopting readers opinions as the beacon of truth in its ecosystems, Meta joins X in the disservice of giving volume and speed to disinformation and extreme and hateful discourse. The decision affects billions of users around the (unregulated) world who today avoid journalism and inform themselves and make decisions based on networks, according to the Reuters/Oxford Digital News Report. And its financially suffocating the fact-checking companies that now have Facebook as an important client.With the excuse that fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, especially in the US (which is not true, according to studies carried out on the role of fact-checking), Zuckerberg creates the ideal environment for the accelerated propagation of any emotionally appealing content that generates engagement and sharing, the exact environment where disinformation is reproduced.Whoever is better at manipulating emotions and world perception tends to win the war, even if its devoid of truth. Whats more, the increased engagement helps Facebook itself, which loses audience year on year.Geopolitical Joo Brant, the Secretary of Digital Policies of the Secretariat of Communication of the Presidency of the Republic, was the one who made the best and quickest analysis of this risk. He said on his Instagram profile: Meta will act politically at the international level in conjunction with the Trump government to combat policies in Europe, Brazil and other countries that seek to balance rights in the online environment. The statement is explicit, signals that the company does not accept the sovereignty of countries over the functioning of the digital environment and sounds like an anticipation of actions that will be taken by the new administration in the US. By guaranteeing this type of international action - which will be associated with the interests of far-right groups and the religious moral conservatism of the countries themselves - Trump is guaranteeing a voice, strengthening and easy expansion of these groups on a global scale.EconomicThe defence of the interests of the Meta and X platforms perceived in these alliances is also the defence of the interests of the American oligopoly that today controls the extraction, prediction and sale of data from a large part of humanity - the companies Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads), Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, the so-called Big Techs (China also has its own: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi. But without the American imperialist pretensions of this size, at least for the time being). An alliance to use the technology of American platforms with possible political/economic pressure from the US government is a powerful way of maintaining the state of data colonialism of the North over the South, including hindering the development of local innovations, especially in Artificial Intelligence, the great innovation tool among the most developed countries.All these fronts of conflict are potentially a threat to the social, political and economic stability of countries whose leaders and politicians have not yet taken the defence of democracy as their primary banner. There is a huge destabilising potential in Metas decision, in many ways, and Brazil has the chance to shield itself, via platform regulation (including from the point of view of competition), from billionaires or reactionaries who use social networks to gain and maintain power via manipulation and disinformation of society. As Joo Brant says: The announcement only reinforces the relevance of the actions underway in Europe, Brazil and Australia, involving the three branches of government. And it amplifies the centrality of the international efforts made at the UN, UNESCO, the G-20 and the OECD to reinforce the agenda of promoting information integrity.Cet article a t initialement publi en portugais

Instead we got Switch Online's retro subscription tiers.Before Nintendo's subscription service took off, fans were able to individually buy and download first-party retro titles and play them whenever they wanted thanks to the Virtual Console service.Although this was eventually replaced with Switch Online's tier-based retro library, Nintendo apparently had plans to carry over the existing Virtual Console service and add online functionality. This information comes from "a new leak of iQue emails not too long ago" according to Yakumono's Blog, run by dataminer (and Nintendo Life user) LuigiBlood.Read the full article on nintendolife.com